German Resistance Center - The Red Orchestra


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The Red Orchestra

As early as the 1930s, resistance circles developed around Arvid Harnack, later senior executive officer in the Reich Ministry of Economics, and Harro Schulze-Boysen, who worked in the Reich Aviation Ministry. In time, other groups with more than one hundred opponents of National Socialism from a wide variety of social backgrounds and ideological traditions joined these circles. Together they formed one of the largest German resistance groups in the early 1940s.

Arvid and Mildred Harnack

A law scholar and economist, before 1933 Arvid Harnack directed Arplan, the widely recognized working group for the study of the Soviet Russian planned economy. After 1933 he consistently opposed the National Socialist regime and found sympathizers in the circle around Adam and Greta Kuckhoff. However, his most important confidante was his American-born wife Mildred, who followed him to Germany in 1929. Fundamental questions of political, scholarly, literary and artistic development were discussed in the Harnack circle.

Harro and Libertas Schulze-Boysen

The journalist Harro Schulze-Boysen was known even before 1933 as a resolute opponent of the National Socialists. In 1932, aged 22, he was editor of the journal "gegner" ("opponent") and center of a group of young people from a variety of political camps. In the mid-1930s a circle of friends opposed to the regime formed around him. Harro Schulze-Boysen worked in the Reich Aviation Ministry from 1934 on, which gave him access to much information about the true nature of the National Socialist regime. His wife Libertas compiled documentation on National Socialist crimes of violence.

Formation of the Network

In 1940, some of the members of the resistance circles around Harnack and Schulze-Boysen, which had been largely independent up to now, established contact with each other and with other groups. This gradually gave rise to a larger network of regime opponents. They employed a variety of different methods in their struggle against National Socialism. They helped persecuted persons, appealed to the public with leaflets and handbills and eventually made contact with like-minded people in Berlin and Hamburg.

Activities in 1941-42

In early 1941, Harnack and Schulze-Boysen met with Soviet diplomats on several occasions. They informed them about the preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union by German troops. Their aim was to put the Soviet leaders in a position to face the attack. They hoped to use this link with the Soviet Union to influence Germany's development after the end of the National Socialist regime and in doing so secure Germany's future independence. The group intended to pass on important military information to Moscow by radio after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, but this plan failed because of technical problems. From February 1942 on, the group distributed leaflets about National Socialist crimes of violence and the military problems on the eastern front. The Gestapo was unable to trace the source of these leaflets.

The End

In the summer of 1942 the resistance network around Harnack and Schulze-Boysen was discovered. The Gestapo collectively labeled the groups "Red Orchestra" in its investigations and sought to classify them as a Soviet espionage organization. This label reduced the groups around Harnack and Schulze-Boysen to their contacts with the Soviet intelligence service. Even later, this misrepresentation of their motivations and goals continued to distort German public opinion of the groups. At the end of 1942 the Reich Court Martial pronounced the first death sentences. In all, over fifty members of this group were murdered.